


leia organa|luke skywalker is surrounded by ghosts

by jonphaedrus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: :'), F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 22:31:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5603341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re alone now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	leia organa|luke skywalker is surrounded by ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> i literally thought of this the night we saw the film for the first time and just finished it...rip

Leia Organa is surrounded by ghosts.

She always has been.

As far as she can tell, she always will be.

 

 

The earliest ghost she can remember is her mother. Warm, soft. A figure just out of sight, just around a corner, just behind a wall, waiting to be found. Soft laughter and hot tears, smelling of citrus and flowers and overwhelmingly of _death_.

The ghost never leaves her. Always just behind her shoulder.

Leia never knows whether or not what she does will be enough for her mother to have peace.

 

 

The ghosts of Alderann come all at once, in a rush that’s almost too much for her. Crying out in confusion and anguish. Her father’s voice is lost in the deluge, the scents of home vanished forever.

The years pass, and the ghosts fade one by one. The years pass, and Leia wonders if she could have prevented it. If she had capitulated sooner, if she had known she had the Force, if she had been able to reach their father like Luke had, plead for him to stop.

But no. 

She could not do any of those things. 

Alderann is gone.

 

 

Their father she can see out of the corner of her eye, when she looks hard enough. He always looks tired—there are circles under his eyes, and grey all through his short-cropped curls. It’s hard for her to remember sometimes that he never even reached fifty. 

He doesn’t follow her, for which she is grateful. Leia didn’t know what to do with him when he was alive (always remembers the hand on her shoulder and the mechanised breathing behind her, the wall keeping her from running as Tarkin ordered the Death Star activated, the screaming blast the overwhelming pain as Alderann crumbles to smithereens and he’s there behind her) so she never tells Luke that their father is always watching.

He probably knows.

 

 

The Hosnian system’s destruction is nothing new to her. Across the galaxy, Leia can feel it as Poe catches her. She’s falling, falling, head over heels and down to the floor, and this time her father isn’t there to catch her or hold her. “No,” she whispers, and the voice doesn’t sound like hers. “No, no, please,” _not again_ gets stuck in her throat because haven’t they seen enough death? Haven’t they all?

Wasn’t once enough?

It’s quiet, afterward. So quiet. They’re behind her eyelids, millions of them. Screaming, crying. Over in less than a second.

 

 

 _Han_.

 _Han_ , her soul cries out, her body screams. _Han_ , her heart rends, her eyes close, her chest punctures and caves. _Han_ , she wants to scream but there’s no breath in her lungs and everything is collapsing, narrowing, closing in, silencing. 

_Han._

 

 

Luke comes back, his face haggard with age in a way she never thought she would see. His eyes are sunken, and he looks like their father, who is never far behind.

“Leia,” he whispers, and she takes his face in both her hands, presses their foreheads together. “Leia—“

“Han,” she replies, and Luke’s sob is muffled, the sound of him crumbling apart, and she holds him, closes her eyes, holds him.

They’re alone now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Luke Skywalker is surrounded by ghosts.

He wasn’t always.

Now he always will be.

 

 

His aunt and uncle touch on his soul with gentle hands that say _we never did enough_ and _you deserved the truth_ and _we’re sorry_. He never knows what to say to them, the words catching in his throat as their whispers fade with time.

They only did their best. That was all they could do.

 

 

Obi-Wan is more than a ghost. He is there, and his body might be gone but his spirit remains. His hands guide Luke through more than he cares to admit, Obi-Wan’s gentle voice turning him away from paths that lead to ruin, bring him back to the light. 

Sometimes, Luke feels stifled. The dead stay dead, except when they don’t. Obi-Wan never stays dead. Obi-Wan’s grief fills the Force, guides Luke’s hands, reminds him of what he must do. He must complete everything that his mentors failed to. 

He must prove himself worth their belief.

 

 

Yoda rests.

For this, Luke is glad.

 

 

He can see their father out of the corner of his eye, whenever he stops to glance. It’s disconcerting—Luke always expects the mask, the breathing, the slump to the shoulders held up by metal and machine. He never expects the tired eyes and the short grey hair, the anguish on Anakin Skywalker’s face.

He hates that the father he remembers was the body his father hated, that he can never quite equate the face with the name with the voice with the man. Luke remembers black leather gloves and the squeak of a fried respirator, he remembers his father’s eyes closing and his lightsabre digging into the flesh of his hand.

Luke doesn’t remember those old sad eyes.

He feels worst about that.

 

 

Hosnian Prime hits him like a freighter to the chest, nearly knocking him sprawled. The screaming, _oh_ , the screaming. Suddenly, Luke understands everything: he understands why Obi-Wan sagged, he understands why Leia still has a tear in her, why the galaxy has never healed even after thirty years from Alderann.

They are gone. Tens of millions, alive, snuffed out, dead. Dead and screaming. Their planet has left a hole in the galaxy, a tear in the fabric. Empty space.

Luke crouches on the ground, hands clutched to his chest, and holds back the screams while he can feel the world crumbling around him, the living Force sundered into nothingness.

 

 

Han is gone, and it is quiet.

Han is gone, and it feels like something out of Luke is gone, too.

How long had it been the three of them? How much had they been through together? Love and duty and belief and friendship knotted up between the siblings and the smuggler, and now the tip of their triangle is gone.

The emptiness in the galaxy is too much, too much for anyone, too much for any _thing_.

This is all his fault.

 

 

Luke comes back, and Leia’s face is haggard with age and the deep-seated pain that spikes into his own heart as sharp as the blade of their father’s lightsabre once was into his hand.

“Leia,” he whispers, and she takes his face in both her hands, presses their foreheads together. “Leia—“

“Han,” Leia replies, and his sob is muffled, he’s crumbling apart, and she holds him, they close their eyes, he hangs onto her like if he breathes in too fast she’ll be gone, too.

They’re alone now.


End file.
